


i never dreamed that i'd lose somebody like you

by The_Bisexual_From_Hell



Series: baby, you turn to ashes [5]
Category: Station 19 (TV)
Genre: F/M, Grief/Mourning, I'm Sorry, Sad with a Bittersweet Ending, so I will damn it, the writers won't left vic process her emotions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-13 03:54:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29395815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Bisexual_From_Hell/pseuds/The_Bisexual_From_Hell
Summary: Andy and Sullivan get married, Vic deals with the mixed feelings it causes her.
Relationships: Victoria Hughes & Robert Sullivan, Victoria Hughes/Lucas Ripley
Series: baby, you turn to ashes [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2051307
Comments: 16
Kudos: 21





	i never dreamed that i'd lose somebody like you

**Author's Note:**

> English isn't my first language, sorry for any mistakes.

“One more announcement, while I have you here, I would like to say publicly, that I love this woman, and I love her so much, that I married her, so this is sort of our wedding reception” Sullivan announced to the station during spaghetti night while holding Andy and looking at her lovingly. 

Vic felt like she couldn’t breathe, the pain was suffocating, blocking her airway. Her hand stays clutching her own jaw, she forces herself not to break down in front of all of these people. The conversation stops, reduced to murmurs of confusion, and awkward congratulations. 

Vic can feel the grief she’s bottled up bubble around her and turn the world blurry. She made her way out of the engine room and into the turnout room. The turnout room was the closest, but it’s also one of the most painful places of the station for her. Flashes of stolen kisses and hushed down moans invade her mind. Lucas Ripley is everywhere, some days it's comforting, some days it’s suffocating, some days it makes her want to burn everything to the ground. 

Her hand flew to the grills of a locker for support and she desperately wished that were happening for a different reason. Vic can no longer hold back her tears, she can’t blink them away like she does most days. She tries to sob quietly, this is a fire station full of firefighters that have been trained to listen for cries. 

Most of the time, she’s okay, she’s not doing great—she will, one day she’s going to be great—but she’s okay. She’s not depressed, she feels happy often—a muted kind of happiness, it’s diluted— a part of her knows that her _After_ happiness will never match the _Before_ happiness. She’s come to terms with that, losing the love of her life was devastating, it tiled the axis of her world, she’s not going to come back from that unscathed. Still most days she’s doing okay. She’s dealing with her fiancé's death. She’s dealing with the anger. She’s dealing with the sadness. She’s dealing with the abandonment. She’s dealing with the loneliness. She’s dealing with her grief. 

Vic never expected to deal with envy. 

One would think that’s something she has to deal with, to feel envious of couples that get to have their happy endings or a miraculous second chance. Vic doesn’t, she really doesn’t, feel envious of them, because what she had with Lucas was special, and sacred, and fucking untouchable. 

Until now. 

Until Sullivan and Andy announced they had gotten married. 

Don’t get her wrong, she’s happy for them, she fucking over the moon, they both deserve to be happy. That doesn’t stop the rage and envy that are choking her from the inside out. It doesn’t erase that she wants to cry so much she thinks she’s drowning in her own tears. Today is categorically a bad day, the kind of day that ends with her listening to the voicemails Lucas had left her before dying while holding a bottle of vodka and drinking until she can taste his kisses and lay down with him, even if it’s all in her head. 

“Hughes,” Maya’s voice breaks her train of thought—it's a small relief. Maya’s tone has the captain's harshness Vic has slowly been getting used to. “What are you doing here? It’s spaghetti night, we have a job to do,”

“Sorry, Captain, I needed to escape the awkwardness, I’ll go back,” Vic tries to infuse her words with her regular humor, it doesn’t quite work, her voice cracks and she can feel the tears in her eyes. 

“Vic, are you okay?” Maya now sounds like a concerned friend, further confirmation that Vic did not succeed in acting nonchalantly. 

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Vic tried not to sound bitter, she was determined not to become a bitter person, but sometimes she couldn’t help it. 

“What’s going on?” Maya rubbed comforting circles on her back, unsure of whether or not Vic wanted a hug. 

“Nothing, it’s stupid,” Vic tried to dismiss her, she really did not need her captain thinking she was an emotional mess. “Really, I’m fine,” 

“Vic,” Maya pushed. 

“Sullivan and Andy got married,” 

“Okay…” Maya sounded confused, Vic can’t really blame her, they haven’t been the closest lately, and sometimes she feels as if the station had swept her relationship with Lucas under the rug after the funeral—she can’t blame them, she allowed it to happen, pretending to forget hurt less. 

“Andy and Sullivan got married and all I’m left with is a tattoo of _his_ time of death,” Vic’s teammates had asked her before what the new tattoo on her ribcage meant, she could never bring herself to tell the truth. “Fucking 17:43,” 

“Oh,” Maya went for a hug, Vic couldn’t resist. “Vic, go home,” 

“No, I can’t just leave halfway through the shift?” Vic protested, there is no home to go to. She’s been living with Dean recently, and while she loved him and Pru, she can’t call it home just yet. Home was the station, home was her apartment, home was Lucas’ apartment, home was Lucas’ arms. Her only home left is the station. 

“As your Captain, I am ordering you to go home Hughes,” Maya’s tone left no room for argument, although Vic was the woman who had yelled at the Chief. If it weren’t for the fact that the station was suffocating her, she would have protested Maya’s order. 

Vic changes into her civilian clothes in record time, she grabs her things and promises Maya that she’ll be back for the next shift. She shoots Travis a text about crashing at his place tonight even if she knows damn well he trusts her so much there’s no need for a text. 

Travis has been her lifeline. He had been the one to hold her those first nights without Lucas where all she could do was cry. He understands her, her pain, he knows it as well as she knows his. Sometimes they would laugh about it, sometimes they would cry about it, sometimes they would rage about it. Nothing changes the fact that they had both lost the love of their lives to firefighting before they had truly gotten the chance to live fully. Travis and Michael had gotten more time together than Vic and Lucas, but the pain was fundamentally the same. The same twitching feeling of despair caused by the inescapable and undeniable truth that the person you wanted to spend the rest of your life with is never coming home, you never get to talk to them again, to touch them again, to be loved by them again. 

Vic tries to go to the cemetery once a week, and tell Lucas about her life, about the fires she has put out that week, about what food Pru had decided not to like this week. She can’t imagine Lucas not being a part of her life, even in this feeble way. She had gone three days ago to visit him, as per usual she had been drinking a cold cup of coffee and a stale bagel from their diner—eating the eggy thing was not something she could do without bursting into tears these days. 

“Hey hubby,” Vic sits down in front of his grave, not caring about the damp grass. “So I have big news, as always I’m sure you know already because you are watching over us from wherever you are,” 

Vic takes a sip of her coffee and tries not to cry.

“Sullivan and Andy got married, I’m really happy for them,” 

She pours a little of the cup of coffee she had gotten for him on the ground, so it feels more like a conversation. 

“It hurts a lot more than I expected it to, which I know right? Shocking I can be in even more pain after you died,” Vic let out a humorless laugh. “I don’t know I guess I’m envious that they are living what we were supposed to have, it was our thing y’know? The whole boss-subordinate forbidden romance, which leads to a secret affair, and eventually into the discussion of marriage both as a symbol of our love and a way to evade the consequences of our actions,” 

Sobs wracked through her body. 

“I guess it’s theirs now, we never got as far as a happy ending huh babe?” 

She bit the bagel and forced herself to calm down. 

“I don’t think your death is ever going to stop hurting, you took a chunk of me when you died and I’m trying to fill it up and fix myself whichever way I can.” Vic wiped her tears away, “I'm getting better, slowly, even if I have bad days, I’m getting better and I think you’d be proud of me,” 

Vic readjusted her position and leaned in to softly trace the inscription on his grave with her fingertips.

_Lucas Ripley_

_11.15.1975 - 2.3.2019_

_Beloved son, brother, fiancé_

Jennifer had insisted on the last part, claiming it was what Lucas would have wanted.

“Seeing Andy and Sullivan made me wonder if I’ll ever have another great love, I don’t think anyone could ever love me like you did, and I’ll never love anyone the way I loved you. But I want to find happiness in someone again, in someone that’s okay with knowing they’ll always have to share my heart with you”

“You will,” Sullivan’s voice was soft and full of understanding, he sat down on the grass next to her. “I did, it took me fifteen years to find Andy, and it was worth the wait, and I love her differently than I loved Claire,”

Vic started to cry again, Sullivan put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close, she leaned into his warm embrace. 

“How did you know I would be here?” 

“Bishop told me she’d sent you home, it didn’t take much to put the pieces together,” Sullivan replied honestly. “Besides, when I need guidance, I talk to Claire, she’s buried here too, just a couple of graves away, my wife and my best friend,” 

“Oh,” Vic knew Sullivan understood her pain, as well as Travis did, they just weren’t that close. 

“I miss him so much,” Sullivan’s voice cracked, “I miss them both so much, every day I feel their absence. Luke was my Montgomery you know?” 

“He’d tell me stories of your time together at 88,” Vic replied through the tears, “He loved you so much, you were always his best friend, he would have wanted you to be his best man,” 

“I wish he could have been mine,” Sullivan’s words choked with tears “I wish you two had gotten the chance to get married, I wish we had more time to fix our friendship,” 

“I really am happy for you and Andy, both of you deserve to be so incredibly happy together,”

“I know, I also know it hurts,” Sullivan said like he was reading her mind, Vic nodded into his chest. “Thank you for letting us borrow your story, I promise we’ll take care of it,”

“Anytime,” Vic cry-laughed. “Just make sure you change the ending, both you and Andy have had more than enough grief for a lifetime.” 

“We’ll try,” Sullivan replied honestly, with a job like theirs, you never knew what could happen. 

“Thank you for this,” Vic murmured. 

“When I found out two were together, I told him—more like promised him, if it ever came down to it, I’d protect you,” Sullivan explained. “I intended to keep that promise, for as long as I can,” 

Vic hugged him a little bit tighter and they sat in silence until Andy had joined them, her own eyes puffy and red from crying, she had visited Ryan and her dad. 

"Congratulations Andy, you two make a beautiful couple," Vic said as all three of them sat on the grass. 

"I think I sat on a puddle of coffee," Andy's voice raspy from crying. 

"My bad," Vic giggled. 

**Author's Note:**

> I needed Vic and Sullivan to talk about Ripley and I needed Vic to feel things about his wedding to Andy, so I had to write it myself. 
> 
> Shout out to my friend teasgaypanic for being my beta, sorry I made you cry.
> 
> The new chapter of family reunions coming this weekend. 
> 
> Follow me on Twitter @DXNYARYA for more Station 19/Grey’s Anatomy and other wacky stuff.
> 
> Please leave a comment or a kudos it would make me the happiest person alive.


End file.
